The Tide
by Knights of Cydonian Starlight
Summary: And abusive father, a bed-ridden mother, and three children with a wretched past. They make up the Fuji family, distant, hopeless, and wounded.


Sara: OKAY GUYS. I SUCK AND I KNOW IT. I promised you I would post a one shot after we finished Living Hell, and here it is! THREE MONTHS LATE. A songfic about "The Tide" by The Spill Canvas.

Sky: ... Sara's also a bit of a narcissist too :P She's had this written for a little while, but asked me to edit it just for today.

Sara: BECAUSE IT'S BOTH OF OUR BIRTHDAYS! *pops the sparkly cider* :D

Sky: ... So as birthday presents to the both of us, you wanted to post a story...?

Sara: Hehe, I wanted to post it anyway, but I thought today was a good day :D So, without further ado, as a gift to you all (us included), here is The Tide by Knights of Cydonian Starlight!

Disclaimer: We do not own Prince of Tennis.

Warnings: Emotionally heavy? It's a pretty sad fic. AU-ness. Character death. And lots of line breaks.

Suggested listening: The Tide by The Spill Canvas and Stockholm Syndrome by Muse

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><p>The Tide<p>

Society is like an ocean's tide. Once something is swept into the sea by the waves, it is nearly impossible to recover.

./. .\.

Fuji Yumiko glanced at her two young brothers, smiling an affectionate smile as they fought for her already undivided attention.

"Nee-san, nee-san, look!" Syusuke crowed happily as he held something up in his little hands for his sister to see.

"We caught a crab! Look how big its claws are!" Yuuta made a grab for the angry red thing that was screaming for its freedom, but he only ended up clutching at empty air as Syusuke ran off with the creature still in his grasp.

"Catch me if you can!" the boy cried, a childlike joy alighting his deep blue eyes.

Yumiko chuckled warmly. She was fourteen. The boys were six and seven, respectively. It was remarkable how young and _innocent_ they were, despite their troubled past. Even at the beach, far too cold for comfort at this time of year, the boys frolicked and splashed through the waves, catching crabs and letting sand trickle through their little pink toes. Yumiko looked upon the both of them, more like an under aged and less-than-experienced mother than anything.

"Itai!"

Her head snapped up as he heard her brother's pained cry. She saw Yuuta clutching his already swelling finger to his chest, sobs racking through his chest that he had tried and failed to smother. Syusuke, meanwhile, was shouting abuse at the guilty crab that he had just kicked back into the sea.

Yumiko bent over the shaking boy, taking the inflamed finger between her hands. As Syusuke clutched her arm in obvious panic, she kissed it. Yuuta stopped crying immediately.

"Come on, sweetheart," the girl murmured, brushing his eyelashes with the back of her hand. "Let's go to the hospital and get you all bandaged up. We might even get to see okaa-san while we're there, too."

./. .\.

"Kaa-san!" Yuuta cried as he came bolting into the hospital room, causing a couple of disgruntled nurses to shout half-hearted protests about running in the hallways. But he didn't realize, didn't care, because all he wanted was the warmth and safety of his mother's arms.

"Yuuta, sweetheart," Fuji Yoshiko murmured into the boy's hair, pressing him closer to her chest. Ignoring the stabs of pain in her still-broken ribs, she gave the boy a kiss on the cheek, making him squirm at the sudden affection.

"Good afternoon, kaa-san. How are you feeling?"

Yumiko and Syusuke, always the polite, always considerate, entered the room at that time. Their mother greeted them warmly and allowed them to peck her on the cheek.

"What happened to your finger?" she gasped as she caught sight of Yuuta's bandaged appendage. Yuuta made a face at Yumiko, who was chuckling with poorly concealed amusement. Syusuke, meanwhile, was glaring at the disgruntling memory.

"A crab got me." It was so comical, Yuuta's defiant expression, his tone that Yoshiko laughed. She looked awful, she realized, especially to children as young as hers. Her face scarred and body broken, she supposed that she looked more like an ex-convict than a mother. Her husband had done this to her, to all of them. He left them broken. Alone.

But for a moment, just one moment, they were a family again. Not three children and a bed-ridden mother. Not four people with a wretchedly abusive past. A true, loving family.

And they all wished that that would never change.

./. .\.

Some time later, Yumiko bit her lip, examining the tarot cards spread out in front of her in the coarse sand of the beach. They were speaking with her, yearning to tell her the one thing that would make everything make sense, but she couldn't understand, couldn't see the meaning of the pictures, their grotesque faces jeering up at her, their sardonic humour driving her mad.

"Ah!" she cried in anguish as her hands came down, causing the cards to scatter throughout the air. When they had settled once again, the girl could see the Lovers sneering at her. Oh, how her cards, her best friends, how they loved to torment her!

Yumiko licked her lips, gazing out to the lazy sea. It was quite calm today, gentle waves rolling toward their shore, their white tips dissolving before another one came. It was soothing, comforting; she was suddenly grateful that her family lived by the ocean.

She closed her eyes and dreamed. Dreamed of a handsome boy. Dreamed of escaping this dead-end street, dreamed of abandoning all of this loss and pain to start fresh, new. She dreamed of a different life. She dreamed of love…

_Yumiko, I love you. I can take you away. I can save you from your hateful father. I can save you from your brothers. We can run away, Yumiko, and never come back._

_Yes… oh, yes! Take me away! I never want to see this horrid place again!_

_No!_ Yumiko thought suddenly, aghast at the thought of abandoning her mother, her brothers. What would the two little boys do without her there to care for them? Would they go to an orphanage? Live on the streets?

Her eyes snapped open as a wave crashed thunderously against a terrifyingly sharp cliff. The spray showered her even so far away, soaking her cards through with saltwater. With a yelp, she collected her friends in her arms and ran off, sobbing miserable, tearless sobs.

Somehow, the Lovers ended up on the top of the pile. If she really thought about it, Yumiko could hear them laughing at her.

./. .\.

Syusuke was a strange, lonely child.

It wasn't that he didn't want friends. He just felt like he didn't _need_ them. Friends were unreliable. They changed over time. But brotherly love didn't – or at least, that's what Syusuke believed.

Yuuta was his brother, yet Syusuke treated him like his own child. Protecting him from playground squabbles, nursing him when he was injured…

And he enjoyed it all. Nothing pleased Syusuke more than to see his brother smile and be happy. Perhaps it was because he himself had never felt the joys of life after his father had turned on them, leaving them all broken. He wanted Yuuta to have the childhood he would never have.

He wasn't jealous of his brother, either. An almost paternal fondness spread over him when Yuuta would come home from school, telling stories and chatting endlessly until his throat was raw from laughter.

No, Syusuke was jealous of his sister.

Was it humanly possible to be so perfect? Fuji Yumiko was the utter embodiment of beauty. With her remarkable intelligence, elegance, and excellent cooking, Syusuke could only wonder when she would be swept away by her own Prince Charming to never see them again. What would happen to them then?

Syusuke gently massaged his mother's hand as she slept soundly in her hospital bed, nothing but the soft beating of the heart monitor to break the almost palpable silence.

There were a lot of things Syusuke hoped for. He hoped that his father would come back. He hoped that his mother would take care of them, as a mother should. He hoped that Yumiko would stay with them, always.

But most of all, he hoped that Yuuta would be safe.

./. .\.

Yuuta watched as small ringlets circled his pebble, all uniform in shape, varying in size. The dock was peaceful, quiet. He half expected his aniki to sneak up behind him like he loved to do, explaining the physics of skipping rocks.

"Yuuta," a soft voice chimed behind him, all too serious for such a young child. Speak of the devil.

"Aniki," the younger one responded with a nod, still not taking his eyes off of the water. His hair danced in the salty wind, playing at his eyes, and he realized that they were wet with tears. Startled, Yuuta brushed them away with the back of his hand.

"Why are you sad, Yuuta?" Syusuke reached out to touch his brother's cheek, yearning to take away all the sadness, the pain. "Why are you crying?"

At first, Yuuta didn't respond, and just stared at his brother in bewilderment. Then he clutched his hands into fists, and he punched something invisible in the air. He suddenly cried out in desperation, clamping his eyes shut as the tears blurred his vision.

"Yuuta!" Syusuke gasped as he pinned his brother's arms behind his back. The boy continued to shake, to convulse as he suddenly felt horridly sick, and Syusuke allowed him to lean over to become violently ill. It wouldn't stop, this overwhelming torrent of sudden sadness almost like the waves crashing on the beach. Yuuta pounded at his brother's chest, not caring about causing his _brother_ injury, as well. Did he want Syusuke to end up in his hospital just like their mother after what his father had done to her?

"I want… to be sad," Yuuta choked out once he could breathe again. "I want to be angry at him. At _her_, for letting him do it to her. But… but I love them too much. I don't want to love them anymore."

It soon grew dark and the waves receded into the ocean, but Syusuke still hadn't responded. He didn't need to say anything, no. They didn't need to speak, to say anything because they each knew exactly how the other felt. And they were fine with just knowing.

Some time after they had gotten to the hospital, Yuuta murmured something in Syusuke's ear before he fell asleep on his aniki's chest. The older boy leaned down to catch every word that his brother spoke over the soft beeping of the heart monitors.

"I love you, Aniki."

Syusuke smiled as tears coursed down his pale cheeks, stroking the sleeping Yuuta's arm tenderly.

"I love you too, Yuuta. Sleep well."

./. .\.

"It's alright, kaa-san. I've got you."

Yumiko patiently led her mother into the haphazardly put-together living room, where there were still leftover takeout boxes and pairs of chopsticks lying around from last night's dinner. The woman could barely stand, let alone walk, and she kept a death grip on her daughter's arm. Syusuke and Yuuta trailed behind the two, keeping a respectable distance for reasons they even did not know.

Yumiko set her mother down on her bed down the hallway, giving her a meager smile. Yoshiko beamed in return and patted her daughter's hand.

"I love you, sweetheart," she said. Yumiko merely nodded placidly in return and started when she sensed her brothers come up behind her. It was odd, since she was normally so carefully attuned to her surroundings.

Yuuta managed to wiggle under the covers to snuggle against his mother's side.

"Kaa-san?" he whispered tentatively.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

The boy idly played with a stray thread on the bed sheets before responding. Finally, he said, "Kaa-san, when is tou-san coming home?"

She stroked the boy's hair, contemplative. For a while no one spoke, because all but Yuuta knew the answer. Both Yumiko and Syusuke refrained from telling the boy, his eyes shining with a child's hope.

Instead, Yoshiko broke the quiet by humming. It was a slow, haunting tune that resonated through each of their chests. As children, it was the melody of a wordless lullaby that she would sing when they were restless. It was odd this time, though, because she added words.

_Heaven's not a place that you go when you die  
>It's the moment in life when you actually feel alive<br>So live for the moment  
>And take this advice, live by every word<br>Love is just a hoax so forget everything that you've heard_

It went on like that for a while until finally, finally the children were fast asleep. Yoshiko sighed in relief, grateful that she wouldn't have to answer any of their questions, and she too fell into a deep, oblivious unconsciousness.

./. .\.

They stood on the dock, all alone among the wide expanse of the dreary beach. Hand in hand, the children soaked in the salt and the sea and the air, pondering life without the troubles of their dysfunctional home. The dulcet undulating of the waves should have been deemed some sort of therapy, for Yumiko found her mind going blank, entranced with the force of Mother Nature.

"Saa, this wouldn't be such a bad place to go, ne?"

Syusuke's mild voice shocked his siblings. They had never heard him more desperate, more desperately sad before. He was looking at them with an almost expectant glare on his thin face, waiting for an answer. His almost unearthly blue orbs were wide open, his expression contorted into a sort of grimace, burning his brother and sister with his intense gaze.

"Aniki…" Yuuta hedged tentatively. He had never been more intimidated by his brother before, though in truth he agreed with him. Dying here would certainly be simpler, more pleasant than staying at home to see their mother suffer. Her screaming fits during the night were becoming unbearable at best, torturing at worst.

Syusuke's voice became sharp, quick; the two others had to lean in to catch every word he was saying.

"I'm _tired_," he whispered fervently over the din of the waves. It had begun to gust, and the water became choppy and restless. "I'm tired of going home to find tou-san beating kaa-san unconscious. I'm tired of having to go to the hospital _every day_ to find her with scars and bruises and broken bones. And I'm _tired_ of pretending that it _doesn't_ bother me, like it's _okay_. It's _not_ okay for me. I don't want to have to deal with it anymore."

"Aniki… Think of all of the children who live in countries where there's no food or water! Sometimes they don't even _have_ parents because they live in places where they get bombed every day! Compared to them, we are lucky!" Yuuta interjected passionately, but he was cut off yet again by Syusuke's bitter raving.

"I've had enough, Yuuta, Yumiko." His eyes sparkled with tears as he shook his head, denying his brother's reasoning, denying his very existence. He glanced at them with a sort of reverence in his eyes, a sort of guilt that made Yuuta choke on the sobs that broke through his chest. Through the horrendous pain of the moment, Syusuke smiled.

"I which I were like you, Yuuta," he murmured as the tears finally spilled over, cascading down his pale cheeks and mixing with the salty spray of the ocean. "You're so smart and brave. I'm merely a coward. For that, I'm sorry."

And with that, Fuji Syusuke turned and launched himself off of the dock into the churning sea below.

He hit the water with a muffled _splash_, diving into the waves headfirst. He hadn't thought to gulp down air before he jumped, and immediately his lungs filled with water. He couldn't breathe.

Who said that drowning was easy? Painless? Who said that it would be as simple as falling asleep?

They were wrong.

Syusuke flailed and gasped as he sucked in more water, screaming in the sheer panic of the moment. Hadn't he wished this on himself? he thought angrily. He would have given anything in the world to take it back now.

Clutching his throat, Syusuke let his mind go totally blank. He let the water force his lungs to constrict, yearning for another taste of the clean air above. He let his vision go black at the edges, unconsciousness tearing at his very core. He let the current drag him off into the sea, possibly to where his body would never be found.

Syusuke fell still. Soon, very soon, it didn't hurt at all.

./. .\.

"_No!_"

"Yuuta!"

Yuuta clawed at his sister's restraining arms, spitting insults and abuse at her. "_Aniki!_" he cried, knowing his brother wouldn't hear him, but hoping nonetheless. "_Aniki, aniki!_"

He sobbed broken, tearless sobs as the waves lapped languidly against the dock. He saw the remnants of the ringlets that surrounded his brother's body, not unlike what he saw when he was skipping rocks. Soon, Yuuta couldn't see anything at all except for the suddenly violent movements of the ocean. It looked almost hungry, yearning to swallow up another innocent victim to satisfy its bodily need.

"_Aniki!_"

In a sudden burst of strength, Yuuta was able to throw off Yumiko's weight, sending her flying into the dock. Pain shot up her spine, and the last thing she saw of her brother was his hand reaching out for his beloved Syusuke before sinking back into the sea.

Yumiko was stunned. Like a ghost, she padded to the edge of the dock, watching as the tiny bubbles of air on the surface were swept away by the waves. For a moment, she just stood there, staring dumbly at the water, frantically searching for any sign of her brothers.

Then, she screamed.

It was an unearthly sound, a sound that could boil blood, curl skin. The air clawed up her throat until it felt raw, and it was a scream of anguish, of loss, of pain.

After some time, her voice died away to incoherent murmurings and dry sobs. Soon after that, she disappeared from the dock as the waves lapped against the desolate shore, sated at last.

./. .\.

Fuji Yoshiko sat slumped over her kitchen table, her tongue lolling out of her liquor-painted lips, a bottle in one hand, a dying cigarette in the other. In the back of her mind, she wondered about her children who were probably all alone on the beach, but for the moment it wasn't her concern. She was drowning in her booze and memories, trying to forget the pain and abuse and troubles that had plagued her since her children were born.

./. .\.

Their bodies were found not too long after that.

High tide had come and gone, leaving an assortment of shells and mollusks and seaweed on the white sand. Any child would have been thrilled at the sight – except, of course, when three corpses washed up along with a bale of dispassionate sea turtles.

The children were small and frail in death. Their faces were drawn, so unlike the accepted peaceful perception of the dead. They had the faces of the pained, the broken, the defeated. One of the boys, the older one perhaps, had his eyes wide open; the shockingly blue irises, even unanimated and glassy, held an expression of pure terror and bewilderment. The police pitied the children; drowning certainly wasn't the easiest way to die.

The bodies were never identified. Though, a woman with the same shade of golden chestnut hair was found dead in her home not too long after. Poor thing must have had enough whiskey in her system to knock out an elephant, and enough injuries to boot.

In the end, the bodies were cremated, the ashes shelved away in some nondescript cabinet in the morgue. But there was something that the agents on the case couldn't shake from their minds, even years after the bodies were burned; as the tide threatened to drag them back into the sea, as the water swirled hungrily once more… The children's fingers were so tightly wound together that the medical examiner had trouble pulling them apart. Even in death, they were inseparable.

Even in death.

_Heaven's not a place that you go when you die  
>It's that moment in life when you actually feel alive<br>Take this advice, live by every word  
>Love's completely real, so forget anything that you've heard<br>And live for the moment now_

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><p>Sara: LOL now that I read that over again it doesn't make much sense. I hope you enjoyed it anyway ^^ Lame ending is lame :X The Tide is a beautiful song, and if you guys get a chance to listen to it, then please do! I love the lyrics, they're really sad but at the same time so real.<p>

Sky: And just as a quick update, we're currently writing The Seven Deadly Sins story right now, but Sara's suffering from MAJOR writer's block. We want to make this really good for you guys, so we're not screwing around now. We've also tried to start several Kuroshitsuji and Hetalia fics, but all in vain.

Sara: *Sighs* About five fics sitting unfinished on my desktop. I hate school. It sucks away all my creative juices. And just to let you know, the official pairings for Sins are: Lust - Tezuka/Fuji; Greed - Niou/Yagyuu; Sloth - Atobe/Jirou; Jealousy - Mukahi/Oshitari; Wrath - Kirihara/Hiyoshi; and Pride - Yukimura/Sanada. We hope that this sounds right to you, and if you have any suggestions please tell us!

Sky: Now we must sign off, because this author's note is getting ridiculously long. Until next story ~


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